London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

She found out that Harris had been arrested on indecent assault charges in the UK in August last year. MC told the jury, through tears: “I said: ‘Oh, they have finally got the bastard.’ I was so relieved.”

She had been working at a wine promotion function when she met Harris and was immediately charmed.

He signed an autograph “with my love Rolf Harris” and they posed for photographs before he invited her to dance. “I felt relaxed and comfortable and then in a flash ...” she said, before halting in distress in the witness box.

She went on: “In my wildest dreams I didn’t expect this behaviour from one moment being charming and what you see on the TV and the next him putting his hand up my skirt and trying to get into my most private area of my body.” She added: “He has an evil, dark side.” MC’s allegation is not on the indictment faced by Harris. She was called as a “bad character” witness to support the prosecution case.

Earlier a woman told the court how she was dressed in pyjamas aged 11 when Harris said: “I want to be the first to introduce you to a tongue kiss.”

The witness, known as CM, said the incident happened in Darwin, Australia when she was staying with friends of her parents in 1969. “He put his tongue in my mouth, I was quite repulsed by him,” she told the court.

Harris, 84, of Bray, denies 12 charges of indecent assault against four women victims between 1968 and 1986.